No approval needed
THE Philippine government is about to make the tourist visa—a very important travel document and official authorization for entry and stay—obsolete.The Bureau of Immigration has announced that foreigners with temporary visitor’s visas may extend their stay in the Philippines every two months and up to 16 months without prior approval from the immigration office.
This rule is fraught with danger. The government must authorize every extension of visa. An extension must be requested and applied for. Without this safeguard, it could lose count of foreigners who have extended their stay. A responsible government must keep accurate figures on arriving, overstaying and departing foreigners.
A visa is a contract between a government and a foreigner that defines the conditions of his stay. It is the government’s duty to check on compliance and determine if violations were made.
At a minimum, the government could give each tourist a six-month stay, after which official extension must be granted by the state.
After 16 months, according to Commissioner Marcelino Libanan, a foreigner may extend his stay by another eight months, up to 24 months if his application is approved by the chief of the bureau’s immigration regulation division.
Libanan’s order takes effective immediately. It directs the visa extension office to expedite the processing of pending applications for extension of stay.
What prompted Libanan to issue the new order? Well, he said he was heartened by the 21-percent rise in the number of tourists who extended their stay in the country during the first semester of the year.
Data from the bureau visa extension office showed that from January to June this year, a total of 196,172 applications for extension of stay were approved, compared to 161,984 approved in the same period last year.
It also showed that total tourist arrivals for the six-month period increased by 38,755 to 468,281 arrivals. There were only 439,526 arrivals in the same period last year.
“These statistics indicate that our country is fast emerging as one of Asia’s most favored tourist destinations,” Libanan said.
We don’t think numbers alone could justify the new extension-without-authorization policy. Extensions of stay and increasing arrivals are fine, but an important national program such as immigration and tourism needs safeguards before we throw away the keys to the door.
The immigration regulation division chief, lawyer Gary Mendoza, said the new policy on visa extensions applies to all foreign tourists regardless of nationality.
Previously, foreigners, such as Indians or Chinese, who must secure entry visas to the Philippines, were allowed to extend their stay every month up to a total of only six months.
“Now, any foreigner, whether he is a visa-required national or not, may extend his stay every two months up to a total of 16 months without getting prior approval from the bureau’s management,” Mendoza added.
How did this new immigration rule come about? Did the immigration office consult with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the police and military, or the committees on immigration in the Senate and the House of Representatives?
We doubt that the BI consulted with Filipino and foreign chambers of commerce and business organizations.
We urge a review of the new immigration rule. There are more important elements to a tourism program than warm bodies and dollars. These include national security, the threat to Filipino businesses, dangers to public health and the stay of unwanted aliens who are probably considered undesirable by their own governments.
The visa-waiver program
WE should have an active tourism program to bring in more visitors and catch up with the world in this important economic and nation-building activity.
The tourist visa rules, however, must be respected. Requests for extensions should be required and properly documented.
The Philippines, of course, is a participant in the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) visa-waiver program. As courtesy to fellow members, Asean countries waive the visa requirement for citizens of the 10 countries that comprise the group.
We have also begun, at the initiative of the Bureau of Immigration, a visa-upon-entry program for tourists coming from Mainland China. The bureau owes us a report on the program, especially on the number of Chinese who have visited and have left the Philippines since the undertaking started.
The United States runs a visa-waiver program with 27 other countries, including Japan, whose citizens can visit the US without a visa for up to 90 days.
In July, a new homeland-security bill expanded eligibility for the program by allowing 12 more countries to apply: Taiwan, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Israel, Malta, Slovakia and Uruguay.
The Philippines is light-years away from qualifying because of the US “refusal rates” rule. This is the annual percentage of visa applications from a country that are denied for any reason. US law requires a refusal rate of 3 percent before a country can qualify. The refusal rate for Filipinos must be 40 percent.
